Chute Yeah (The Valentine Boys 3)

“I’ve always had a crush on you,” I said. “In high school, I thought you were the most beautiful thing in the world.”

Still did, as a matter of fact.

And since she was trading off facts, I didn’t see why I couldn’t, too.

“I also loved how you always tried to verbally abuse me,” I continued. “How we could spar, and you could say things that nobody else would say because of who I was.”

She scoffed.

“Banks Valentine, you weren’t all that awesome,” she teased.

I liked her like this. In fact, I liked her in all of her Candy forms, but this one was definitely one I hadn’t had the privilege of witnessing before.

“I was totally hot shit and you know it.” I took a turn that would lead to her house. “All the lights are off.”

She looked up and studied the house as if it was a jigsaw puzzle she couldn’t quite solve.

“My dad goes to bed early,” she admitted. “Earlier now that he’s been staying with me and his hand hasn’t been behaving. I think he gets frustrated with not being able to do what he’s used to, so to counteract his boredom, he just goes to bed. He left the back door open for me.”

“Your dad will be okay,” I found myself trying to soothe her.

She hadn’t said that she was upset, but I could read it in her words. The way she’d clenched her hands into tiny little fists.

“I know,” she admitted. “I guess I didn’t give much thought to how much I would be doing on my own.”

“Owning your own business is a lot of work,” he admitted. “Doing the work of two owners for two separate businesses seems monumental. I don’t even like thinking about what I’m going to do next week, let alone what I’m going to have to do for work.”

She scoffed. “You make beaucoup money riding bulls,” she said. “And when you’re not doing that, you own a fifth of an up-and-coming cattle ranch and horse farm. You probably do more work than me and Desi combined.”

Probably.

“Do you like the coffee shop?” I asked as I pulled around to the back of the house next to her father’s pickup.

“I… don’t know,” she admitted. “I was so excited about this venture, and I wanted it off the ground so bad that I didn’t give it much thought, I guess. I wanted Desi to go in with me, and I pretty much agreed to do what I didn’t want to do just because I needed her.”

“You don’t like doing which part?” I asked.

I didn’t like that she didn’t like it.

I didn’t like it at all.

I wanted her to enjoy the hell out of her job. To be happy with life.

She deserved it.

“I don’t like the serving the customers coffee and pastries part,” she admitted. “When I was younger, I put this dream as the goal. To own my own coffee house. But I guess that dream was mainly because I didn’t think I could achieve the other one. And now that I’m living one of my dreams, I guess it’s just put my other one so far in the back of a dark closet that I don’t think it’ll ever see the light of day.”

I turned the truck off and turned in the seat so I could see her.

“What’s your other dream?” I wondered.

She didn’t seem like she was going to answer me at first, and when she got out of the truck I thought for sure she wasn’t going to.

But when I followed her out, meeting her at the back door, she suddenly whirled and said, “I want to have kids. Lots of them. I want to be married. I want to live that life that Laura Ingalls Wilder lived on Little House on the Prairie.”

My lips twitched. “You want to live a life where there’s no water or power? Where you have no cell phone?”

She waved it away.

“No,” she admitted. “At least not all of it. More so, I just want to be at home with my children. I want to have my husband work, then come home to me. I want… a family.”

I tucked a strand of her hair back behind her ear, then said, “Why can’t you have that?”

With me.

“Because life doesn’t work that way, Banks,” she said. “I’m broken. Nobody wants the broken things.”

I begged to differ.

I wanted the broken things.

I wanted her.

I didn’t stop myself from moving in until I could feel her body heat against me.

“Says who?”

The light switch for the back porch turned on, and then the blinds lifted until I could see Candy’s father staring out at us with a twitching lip that showed his amusement.

“Did I also say that I want my house back to myself again?” she asked. “Because having your father at home so you have to wear pants all the time is getting really old.”